Author: Nick Bonnet

3 Things You Can Do Right Now To Be A Better Marketer

As I’m writing this, unemployment is probably close to 20%, and many states have just started Phase I of their reopening plans. Regardless of whether you think it’s too early, or not soon enough, every business owner I know is anxiously looking forward to some type of re-opening, and planning for what that’s going to look like. (And since I can’t say this enough, if you work in healthcare, public service, grocery stores, a newsroom, utilities, and many more I can’t think of right away – thank you, thank you for all you do). 

Now – if you’re a business owner or VP of Marketing trying to put together a plan for how to market through the rest of this ‘event’, and coming out of it, here are a few things you can do right now that won’t require a lot of resources  (read:money) but will put you ahead of the game as we rebuild the economy.

1. Talk (Email, Phone, Mail) to Your Current Customers

I don’t mean just try to sell them more, although increased sales are definitely a great outcome. Let them know how your brand is doing; how you’re managing your business during this event; what you’re doing to take care of your employees; if they can continue to buy from you; how you might have changed your fulfillment or delivery model. No matter what’s going on, just keeping an open line of communication will help them feel at ease, and make sure they don’t forget about you. And if it turns into new business or new orders? Great – that’s even better.

2. Cut the Software Fat

We all know marketing is sometimes the first to go when things get rough, but in this case, maybe it’s time for a spring cleaning, specifically when it comes to your marketing software subscriptions you’re not using. When’s the last time you took a good look at all of the services you pay every month? Hubspot, Databox, Emma, Salesforce, unused Adobe licenses, this plugin, that plugin – what are you actually using, and what is just costing you money and making your marketing cloud more….cloudy? In our own business we cancelled 3-4 monthly subscriptions that we were using only here and there. If and when we need them for a project – we’ll buy them again. But for now, they’re on pause.

3. Create the Results You Want: What Are You Going to Do Differently?

No matter what business you’re in, I will venture that the way you market has FOREVER changed based on this event. Why am I so certain? Because regardless of anything else, WE have all changed. We, the consumer. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, this event will shape our conversations, our media consumption habits, and our opinions for decades. Take this time to take a fresh look at your business as if it were just starting out, and create a marketing plan – messages, tactics, budgets, and timing – that makes sense for THIS new normal, and go from there. The businesses that are able to pivot quickly and run marketing campaigns that just make sense will reap the rewards. The companies that just turn their old marketing ‘back on’ and expect similar results will spend themselves into a hole they may never climb out of. 

Without spending almost any money at all, you can tackle the 3 things above and be ready to get your business back on track as the economy returns. Use this time wisely, and you, and your business will benefit. And of course – if you need any guidance or just want to talk through some ideas, please don’t hesitate to give us a call, or shoot us an email. We’re happy to help in any way we can.

READY TO TACKLE the NEW NORMAL? CONTACT US: (410) 317-8388 OR CONNECT@AINSLEYAGENCY.COM

Website Down, Red Alert

We know this topic is NOT going to be the most popular for most businesses, but if you’ve ever had an issue with your website – you’ll know why it’s so important. 

We’re talking about….ongoing website maintenance and security. (I can hear the groans now). 

It’s not as fun to spend your budget on website maintenance compared to search marketing, broadcast, sales collateral, re-branding – we get it. But here’s why it’s so important: 

1. Monthly Software Updates. Whether it’s plugins, WordPress core, browsers like Chrome and Firefox, or even the PHP versions, the technology world around your website is constantly evolving and it will take effort to keep your website up to date in perfect working order. Your site was built with specific guidelines in place at the time of launch, and if something major changes it has the potential to cause your site to crash. Regular software updates ensure that as the internet around you continues to evolve, your site is accessible, compliant, and running just as well as the day it was launched.
2. Backups. Have you ever made a serious flub on your website, lost data due to hardware, software, or human error and wish you could roll back time? With regular backups, that’s a real possibility. We maintain frequent (generally daily) back-ups along with a duplicate staging site so that you can test changes out in a safe, private environment before rolling out on your live production site.
3. Security. Our team installs and reviews reporting from security plugins to help defend your website from bad actors. We can block IP addresses, require two-factor authentication, and limit login attempts, among other strategies to help keep your website safe.
4. SSL Certification. If you are accepting any kind of data on your website, meaning you have any sort of contact form or e-commerce, you are going to want to make sure you have an up to date SSL certificate installed on your website. Even if you don’t accept data, Google’s ranking algorithm gives sites with SSL a boost. You don’t want to see “Page Not Secure” next to your site in a browser.
5. Avoid downtime. A variety of different issues can cause a site to go down, and when it does, you want to know about it before your clients do. Our team receives alerts the moment it happens, and can address any issues with the hosting provider on your behalf.
6. Keep a web developer actively engaged with your site. A large part of what inspired us to offer maintenance plans was our clients coming back to us 2-3 years post-launch with a host of updates that needed to be made, some of which had been unknowingly causing them problems for months, and realizing they needed a lot of work just to get the site to a place where we could make those updates. The internet is going to change, and change rapidly. WordPress, web browsers, operating systems, and cyber threats that we address in an initial launch will all continue to evolve and advance, and having a monthly touch point with your website allows us to respond to problems much more quickly, if not prevent them entirely.
7. Continuous Improvement. One of the options available on our maintenance plans is Google Analytics reporting and insights. Our team builds a simple performance dashboard that tracks your most important KPIs, and provides insights and recommendations on how to improve your site’s performance and a better experience for your users. Are visitors spending a lot of time on certain pages, but not converting? Maybe it’s time to review your CTA’s and page content to ensure you’re giving them the information they need. Are people trying to click on things that aren’t clickable? Clearly they’re searching for more information about something, and your site just doesn’t have that depth. Did your organic leads just stop coming in? Perhaps Google rolled out an algorithm update that dropped you from the first page, and we need to restructure our SEO plan to respond to those changes. Not sure which calls are coming from your digital ads, compared to organic search? Let’s install call tracking from CallRail to track ROI from your paid search specifically. There are always opportunities to improve your user’s experience, drive more leads, and communicate more efficiently based on real-time data…as long as you’re looking. 

Think of a website maintenance plan as insurance, with the positive return of the stock market – it’s there to cover you in case something bad were to happen, but pays dividends when you find an opportunity to make proactive changes. In today’s world, small and mid-sized businesses are increasingly becoming the primary targets of cyber attacks – so it’s less a matter of if, and more a question of when.You just invested time and money into the launch of an amazing new website, and ongoing maintenance isn’t the most fun way to spend your marketing budget. But the real question is – does it make sense NOT to at least update your software, secure your data, look for new opportunities, and protect your investment, once a month?

READY TO IMPROVE PROTECT YOUR WEBSITE? CONTACT US: (410) 317-8388 OR CONNECT@AINSLEYAGENCY.COM AND LET’S TALK ABOUT A MAINTENANCE PLAN THAT MAKES SENSE FOR YOUR BUSINESS

As I’m writing this post, the unemployment rate in the markets we serve is low. In Maryland it’s 3.6%, in Virginia it’s 2.6%, and in North Carolina it’s 4%. The economy is booming, and the labor market is the tightest we’ve seen in decades. 

While this is great news for many businesses, it’s creating a new problem for them as well. They are growing and they have a healthy pipeline of work, but they can’t find enough good people to do the work.

Why recruiters are frustrated with Indeed advertising

To put it simply – platforms like Indeed are getting more expensive, and producing fewer results. 

In a tight job market, finding good people is difficult. That’s because that perfect candidate for your opening isn’t cruising Indeed 4 hours a day, going to job fairs, and networking on LinkedIn. They’re at a job they may not love, but they’re employed. They’d be open to a conversation, and may be a great fit for your company, but they need a little push. They need to know that there is a better opportunity out there, and that you’re actively looking for a candidate just like them. 

I’m not saying abandon job boards like Indeed completely – only that putting all of your eggs in one basket, a basket that is highly competitive, very expensive, and reaches only those people actively searching for a job, is going to produce limited results.

Why you should diversify your recruitment advertising dollars

Let’s start by looking at a hypothetical recruitment scenario. Whether you’re hiring for an engineer, salesperson, or project manager, let’s call your perfect prospect “Terry”. 

Terry gets up at 6 a.m. and is usually at his job by 8:30 a.m. Between 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., Terry checks his email using his iPhone; he checks Facebook and clicks on a few articles, one about a snowstorm on the way from the local NBC station, and another from an industry publication he follows that’s offering a new certification he’s interested in. He opens LinkedIn to respond to an invitation to connect from a colleague from his last job. Before leaving the house, he opens his Weather Channel app on his phone to get more info on the weather. On his way to work, he listens to Spotify or Pandora in his car streaming from his iPhone. 

By the time Terry gets to work, he’s ready to start his day. He hasn’t gone to Indeed, or opened the email they sent him because honestly he’s just tired of getting an email from them everyday with a list of jobs that may or may not have anything to do with his career. 

How We Could Have Reached Terry

In just those few short hours of the morning, we had the opportunity to get in front of Terry in the following ways:

• Video ad on Facebook or LinkedIn
• Video ad shown prior to the Weather report Terry watched on demand
• Display ad on Facebook, LinkedIn, or The Weather Channel App
• Display ad on Pandora or Spotify
• :30 “radio” (audio) ad on Pandora or Spotify

The easiest way to explain this shift in targeting your ad dollars is like this: Instead of just waiting for the right people to start looking for a job and then showing them your opening in a competitive and cluttered landscape, we’re going to jump start the conversation early, creating initial interest from qualified candidates by advertising and reaching them wherever they are, on whatever apps, devices and websites they use on a daily basis. 

By taking action and reaching out to possible candidates where they are now, it puts you in the driver’s seat. You’ll have more candidates to choose from, lower your overall cost of attracting those candidates, and be able to find the perfect candidates to help you reach your hiring and retention goals.

Getting started

Setting up a recruitment advertising campaign isn’t hard, it just takes a little research, a little planning, and the right messaging. 

1. 1. Creating a Custom Audience. We start by building custom audiences based on your current job openings, and what we know a qualified candidate would like and act like (online). 
   2. Settling on an Ad Budget. Based on the size of that audience, their location and the location of the position, and the number of openings you have, we create an advertising plan. 
   3. Strategy, Messaging and Creative. Since we’re starting the conversation with these candidates where they are, the initial messaging has to be stronger than just the job title. We tap into the wants, needs, desires and pain points of your target audience to create ads that catch their attention and drive interest.
   4. Prepping your Careers Page to convert. Once we’re reached a candidate, gotten their attention, and driven them to take the next step, our landing page needs to not drop the ball. We’ll work with you to make sure you have the content you need on your careers page or landing page to convince them to apply. We’ve designed entire careers microsites, created video content, directed photo shoots, or simply re-written the content clients currently have to match the language we used in our ads.
   5. Measuring the Results and Continuous Improvement.  We also ensure proper analytics, tracking and retargeting campaigns are all set up to continue to market to candidates that reach that point in their search.  We want higher quality, and high quantity candidates so you can choose the best of the best. We track each aspect of our campaigns to continuously improve the messaging, the placement, and the timing of our ads to make them work better over time and consistently lower the costs associated with reaching your hiring goals.

READY TO IMPROVE YOUR RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING? CONTACT US: (410) 317-8388 OR connect@AINSLEYAGENCY.COM AND LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW TO REACH BETTER CANDIDATES FOR YOUR JOB OPENINGS.

We’ve helped a lot of companies determine if Google search engine marketing is a tool they can leverage to grow their business. Our clients are mature, profitable businesses, but when it comes to digital marketing, and specifically paid search, they simply don’t believe it has any place in their marketing plan because of some failed experiment years ago. Most commonly we find that somewhere in the past, someone tried to set up a campaign in house, put in their credit card information, and after a few days and a few hundred dollars, threw their hands up and said “this isn’t working, turn it off!”

If they’re being honest, they’ll tell you they know they should be doing more, but don’t know where to start, or even what questions to ask. 

Finding your sweet spot with PPC

To help these companies explore whether or not paid search engine marketing (PPC or SEM)  is a smart use of their marketing dollars, we start with a simple dollars and cents, ROI-focused math problem. If the math works, PPC could be a great option. If there’s no profit to be made, either find an alternative way to use search, or don’t waste your time. 

Fair Enough? Let’s Get Started. 

1. First, understand the basics. I’m going to assume for this post that you have a basic understanding of how PPC works. You create an account, build a large list of words and phrases you want to show up for, decide where to target geographically, decide how much you’re willing to spend, what days of the week/times of the day you want to advertise, and you’re off. There’s a lot more to do to run a successful campaign, but let’s leave it there for now. 
2. Focus – Only Go After the Business You Want. If you don’t want dozens of calls and emails from cheap clients that are price shopping – don’t bid on generic, general terms. Most businesses make this mistake because of vanity. Let’s use a mid-market accounting firm as an example. They say “of course I should rank #1 for “Accounting Firm Maryland”, and then spend thousands of dollars to generate leads that are from people looking for a $300 tax return. If you’re an accounting firm that wants $25,000 annual engagements from privately held businesses, and their owners – you need to be bidding on specific words, phrases, and questions those people are searching for. Sure, there will be less leads, because there are less people searching for “accounting firm that specializes in government contractors”, or hundreds of other phrases, questions and terms someone might search for, but that’s the type of lead you’ll take all day long – not the $300 tax return. Bid on the business you want, and don’t worry about ranking #1 for basic phrases that appeal to your vanity, but don’t benefit your bottom line.
3. Do the Math. Use a spreadsheet (or get your agency to do it) to calculate potential costs, conversion rate, # of leads, potential revenue and potential profit. There are some moving parts to this that you can’t control, but you can estimate search volume, conversion rates, close rates, revenue, and profit.

Let’s do the math

Let’s say you’re an accounting firm that has expertise in government contracting, and in helping companies that are fast-growth, have large capital needs in a highly regulated industry, and you would love a dozen more clients in that space.

Using Google’s tools to estimate search volume (search volume is how many people in the US search for a term in a 30-day period) we see that using the massive list of niche keywords and targeted phrases you’ve built, suppose there are 10,000 combined monthly searches for your terms/phrases. Let’s jump to using quarterly numbers to show this playing out at a larger scale:

90-Day Scenario:
Estimated Search Volume: 30,000
Average CTR (Click-Through-Rate) in B2B: 2.41%
Total Clicks/Traffic to Your Site: 723
Average Cost Per Click for B2B: $3.33
Estimated Cost: $2,407.59
Average Conversion Rate for B2B: 3.04%
Net Number of New Leads Per: 22 (rounded up from 21.9792)

Let’s stop there: that means for $2,407.59 you now have 22 new business opportunities. And not only are they new prospects, but they are prospects that were ACTIVELY searching for a solution, or new provider/partner. They’re ready to buy – not just new connections you have to cultivate for years until they might need your help. For whatever reason, they’re searching now. Back to the math…

Measuring revenue, and profit from ppc

Because your hypothetical mid-market accounting firm is not out here looking for $300 tax returns, you tell us that each client is typically worth around $18,000/year in fees, and you’ll will keep them for an average of 5 years (maybe they’re acquired or have some type of exit).

Let’s be conservative and assume that half the leads are garbage. Wrong fit, they’re looking for something different, they can’t afford you, etc. So we’re down to 11 actual leads that are worth having a conversation with. 

Of those 11, let’s be conservative again and assume your closing rate is 3/11. That means of the 11 leads that searched online, clicked on your ad, came to your site, read about you and inquired about your services by calling or emailing, 3 are now paying you. 

3 new clients a quarter x $18,000 a year in fees = $54,000/year in revenue. Multiply that by your average 5 years retention, and you have $270,000 in Billings. Assuming a 15% profit margin, that’s $40,500 in profit. 

In summary, you spent $2,407.59 in hard ad costs over 90 days to generate $270,000 in potential revenue in the next 5 years, and $40,500 in profit. If you’re cynical about the numbers – or the entire calculation – let’s pretend you’re not great at closing, and only close 2 clients a quarter from your 11 qualified leads. Over the course of the year, that’s 8 new clients, totaling 144,000 in annual revenue, and you paid Google Ads $9,630.36 to get that business. Yes, you still need an agency to do all the work, build the landing pages, write the ad copy, track conversions, adjust campaign metrics on a regular basis to ensure success, etc. But even if you add that in, there is money to be made, if you just follow the math. 

We’ll help you run the numbers

Search volume, Cost Per Click, and Annual/Lifetime Customer Value will obviously differ based on your industry, region, and goals. But the numbers are all publicly available from Google, and using tools like SEM Rush, SearchEngineLand, Optmyzr, and more. Contact us to help run the numbers for your company, and we’ll let the results tell us all if there’s a clear opportunity to use paid search to grow your business.

Contact Us: (410) 317-8388 or Connect@ainsleyagency.com for a completely free, no obligation conversation about how to determine if your firm can make money from paid search engine marketing with Google Ads.

On January 14, 2020 at 1:37 p.m., Ainsley officially crosses the ’10 years in business’ milestone. While we have many clients that have been around MUCH longer – such as DAP, who has been “On the Job Since 1865”, a corporate tagline we developed for them, and Daft McCune Walker, who will be celebrating 50 years in business this year – here are a few things I thought I’d share in reflecting back on the past decade: 

 

1. Your path, and your company’s path, is unique to you. There are MANY ways to be successful as an agency, and every company/owner/team has to find their own path. Some agencies double-down on delivering one particular service, some are large, some are small. Some want to be acquired, others want to be independent forever. You have to find the model that works for you, your team, and your goals. 
2. Help people. No matter what services your agency can offer at a given time, when you have the opportunity to help someone solve their marketing problems, just do it. Even if that means sending them to a competitor, or saying “I don’t know” – if you help people find the right path, they’ll remember your willingness to help, and it will pay dividends. 
3. Give free advice/counsel. If someone comes to me for help, I’ll help them, on the back of a napkin at a Starbucks or on a first phone call. If there’s an opportunity for my agency to then partner with them, then so be it. But we help people first, and figure out the partnership model/contract later. If they take advantage of us and never call us again – then they weren’t a good fit for us anyway. Also, karma. 
4. Surround yourself with smart people. I’ve been blessed to have received support, advice, and counsel over the past 10 years from countless friends and colleagues, including Jim Naylor, Mark Cissell, Lisa Gobrecht, Karyn Schell, Jon Jordan, Susan Katz, Marty O’Neill, Deb Tillett, Aaron Moore, Rick Faint and countless others that have answered my calls. Thank you all, and thank you to the countless others that have helped me, and members of my team, over the years. 
5. Build a team – not a group of individuals. Surround yourself with a core team that complements your skills, instead of mirrors them. You need people that are strongest where you are not; that can take on the responsibility for those areas that are not the best use of your time, but need attention and prioritization nonetheless.  
6. Keep it simple, stupid. There is beauty in keeping things simple. Simple doesn’t have to be small, it just means not complex. Whether it’s in the services you offer; the way you deliver those services; the types of clients you accept; your overhead; or any other part of your business – there is freedom, clarity, and even momentum to be gained by not overcomplicating things needlessly. Focus on what’s important – your people, your clients, the value you deliver to each, maintaining profitability and managing risk – and the rest is just clutter. 
7. Deliver value every time. To every client, on every call, in every report. We take pride in helping clients see around corners, uncover new opportunities, find a better way to get the results they want. We want them to learn something new, or see a new opportunity, every time we talk with them. 
8. Act fast (aka avoid paralysis by analysis). This is one area we will strive to improve the most in 2020. So many times we have the data, the idea, the insight to do something new – and then take longer than necessary trying to make it perfect, when timing is more important than perfect. Make it great – and go. You can always make it better. 
9. Trust your gut, and your values. If something doesn’t feel right, no matter how smart the person saying it is, what degree they have, or how much money they’ve made – it doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it just not might be right for you. Stick with your gut reaction – it’s usually the right one. 
10. Be Kind. Work Hard. When I first started this firm 10 years ago, we had a number of core values that were important to me in the way we conduct business, and I codified those into a set of 7 statements about how we work. But if you had shaken me awake in the middle of the night, I would have struggled to get out the 200 words I needed to describe them. With a nod to #6 on this list, we decided to keep our rallying cry and core values down to just 4 words.

Be Kind. Work Hard. If we strive to embody those words in 2020 and beyond, we’ll be working on 10 more takeaways in 2030. 

Thank you to our staff, our clients, our partners, our trusted advisors and our friends and families for supporting us over the last decade. We can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store.

 

-Tom Ainsley, CEO

Call it empathy, call it sales psychology, or just call it marketing, but one of the most important parts of any marketing campaign or project is having a strong hypothesis about what your prospects really want, and a plan for how you’re going to give it to them.

If you know the top 3 things on their “WIIFM” list – What’s In It For Me – you can turn even a small marketing budget, or a small piece of sales collateral, into a high performer.

Let’s take a website project, for example.

There are a number of talented designers, web developers, internet marketing specialists, etc. out there working at agencies, consultancies, as freelancers, or in-house that can build a website, and probably make it “better” than the one you have, if your main concern is simply that your site is a bit outdated.

But the question shouldn’t just be “How can I update my website so it looks better than it does now”.

It should be something along the lines of “How do I take whatever budget and timeline that I have, and use this opportunity to create something that is a BIG step forward – a tool that helps me shorten my sales process, increase my conversion rate, increase the time visitors spend on my site, and create valuable lead flow for my organization.”

One of the best ways we’ve found to create a site with immediate impact is by walking the client through these 5 questions before we start thinking about design or information architecture of a new site:

1. Who are our clients? If B2C list everything we know about them. If B2B, be sure to identfiy not only the companies and their size, but who are the people within the prospect’s organization that would hire us? Is it the CFO, the CEO, the IT Manager, the Assistant to the CEO – who are we talking to?
2. What is the driving force behind someone hiring us? What is going on in their lives that is causing them to seek us out as a potential solution? What are they feeling, how urgent is the scenario, and what are the same generic things that other providers are telling them that will put them to sleep?
3. What role do we believe the website plays in our sales process? Is it a lead generation tool? Is it simply a validation point after someone gives us a referral, or someone in sales initiates a conversation with a prospect? Put more simply – when do people come to our site, and what are they looking to do/read/understand?
4. How do visitors currently use our site? We don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot by ignoring real user data that we already have.
5. What does the competitive landscape look like? What do we have to show to demonstrate expertise, experience, etc. to show that we not only belong, but are leaders?
6. And lastly, and I know I’m dumping a lot into one loaded question – What are the most important things a client would care about this month, this year, in this competitive landscape, and how can we address that in an interesting and meaningful way as quickly and directly as possible on the site?

Most website projects start with companies or agencies trying to cram all of the information they have, or at least all of the information they have on their current site, into a new design. Same content, just a newer, less-ugly-more-current version of what they already have.

If you start with by focusing on who your client really is,  what’s driving their interest, and what they really want – even if they’re not telling you – you’ll be able to answer their WIIFM questions and move them to the next step of your sales process sooner, rather than later.

For our clients and colleagues in the personal financial services industry, April 2016 saw some new, debate-worthy regulations proposed by federal regulators. And with the Trump administration now in charge, the debate continues as to whether these regulations will be enacted, delayed, or killed. The debate stems from the concept of “fiduciary” service, and whether those in financial services should be required by law to act “in the best interest” of their clients.

At first pass, it would seem self-evident; of course they should act in the best interest of their clients. But as always, the devil is in the definition.

Those in financial services understand that the best interest of the client isn’t always self-evident and it certainly isn’t static. “The best interest” is a fluid concept (at best) and it’s not difficult to envision a scenario where wildly divergent recommendations could exist that could both be considered “in the best interest” of the client.

We aren’t here to settle the fiduciary debate. But it frames an important question for our segment of the world; should you want a marketing partner that acts as a fiduciary? Do you want an agency that “acts in your best interests,” regardless of what that means?

At first pass, it would seem self-evident; of course you want an agency that acts in your best interest. But again, the devil is in the definition.

By nature, the raison d’être for a marketing or advertising agency is to act in the best interest of our clients. We pique. We promote. We amplify. It’s baked into the very definition of what we do.

But on closer examination, the fiduciary element extends well beyond the definition of “marketing.” We can always produce a wonderful tagline, a compelling message or perfectly executed campaign that’s “in the best interest” of the client. It might be what they want, but is it what they need? We know we capture attention, generate buzz and deliver an abundance of eyeballs. But what if the client’s needs runs counter to this want?

Look, we love clients to have a laser-like focus on their product or service. We want them to be passionate! They are experts in what they do and this is why they need us. By nature, we are outsiders.

But in order to do our job, we need to eliminate the space between us. Hence the research, the competitive analysis, the key audience profiles, defining the buyer’s journey, and understanding why they buy. This outsider status affords us an overview of the big picture that the client may not have. And that’s where the fiduciary discussion comes in.

What if we recognize that a client’s needs, and how we can best help them succeed, run counter to to what they want? Maybe we recognize their attention should be less focused on social media, or PR, and more focused on building strong relationships with referral partners…or re-defining their services and engagement model…or changing their pricing structure…..or going after niche markets? Or maybe, what if the client needs something that we don’t do? Again, the devil is in the definition.

While so many may be quick to call us an “advertising agency,” in reality, what we are is a consulting firm that happens to be in the business of marketing, strategic communication and creative services. When you look at it that way, it reframes the nature of what a fiduciary relationship might look like.

Here are two questions you should ask yourself about your agency.

Does your agency have the business acumen to recognize when what you want and what you need may be different?

Any advertising agency can get by for a while selling clients on ideas or campaigns that they want. But if those ideas aren’t what the client needs—if they aren’t adding long term value—this approach will fail. In the short term, clients choose what’s cool, what’s sexy and what they think they want. But in the long run, they must choose that which consistently adds value. If they don’t, they won’t be around for long. It’s as simple as that.

Which brings us to the second question:

Do you and your agency have the kind of relationship that empowers them to tell you the truth?

An agency doesn’t need to be dishonest to not tell you the truth. They could very well offer you growth in the short run. It might be what you (think you) want. It might be sexy new logo. It might be a PR campaign that creates buzz and delivers eyeballs. But it might not be what you need.

“Yes” can be a terribly seductive concept to hear, especially for a smaller business with big plans. But you need a business partner who knows when to deliver the “no.” You need a partner who will put a voice to an idea, even if you don’t want to hear it or they don’t want to deliver it. Because sometimes, no is “in the best interest” of the client.

So…back to the original idea: to fiduciary or not fiduciary.

We aren’t here to settle the fiduciary debate. But it frames an important proposition for our segment and your future; is your best interest being served by what you want to hear, or what you need to hear?